Tuesday, October 27, 2009

It has to be admitted that when it comes to modern technology I am the complete Luddite. All yesterday and well into the evening I couldn’t fathom out why, when I switched on Skype, nothing further happened. I kept wondering why that little green arrer wasn’t on the bottom line and why not a single contact was showing a yellow or green symbol. It was only this morning I realised Chris had switched me off-line and I had to switch myself back on. Silly mois. Also I am supposed to save my Blogs in a file and I have already forgotten how to do it. It can wait a few days till he gets back form London. I don’t know why he wants to save them anyway.
After all that rain, clear blue skies this morning but heavy rain is forecast so I suppose it’s only a matter of time before it hits us.
Sex rears its ugly head again, this time in Saudi Arabia where a man appeared in a television programme telling how he seduced a number of women and evidently going into quite graphic detail. For his temerity (and his stupidity I feel) he has been given a lengthy prison sentence and sentenced to 1000 lashes and no that is not a mistake. The questions I have to ask are, how are the lashes administered? Are they at intervals over the length of his sentence or do they happen all at once? Presumably whoever is administering the punishment, when his arm gets tired, hands over to a replacement etc., and how on earth can anyone survive one thousand lashes? It fair boggles the mind. I should think, if he does survive, he fervently wishes he had been born anywhere but in Saudi Arabia or born without the cock that has got him into such a perilous predicament. On the other hand it wasn’t his cock but his own boasting stupidity that landed him in it.
I haven’t talked books for a long time which is neglectful of me considering the number I have been going through but it can wait another day. Must mention though that I have just finished another Karen Slaughter and hugely enjoyed it once again. That girl can really spin a page turning yarn. The only reason I mention it is because I saw only one typo in the whole book and that was “public bone” for “pubic bone”. Easily missed, and the only reason I mention it is because Chris found a huge one in my new book, “The Journeys We Make” despite both Douglas and myself proofing and proofing and proofing. How we missed it I really do not know. At one point (page 124) a character mentions Cockney rhyming slang and talks of “apples and pears” for which I have written “apples and pairs!” Oh, wow, how on earth did we miss that one? The spell-check didn’t pick it up of course because pairs was spelt correctly so why question it? The question now though is: does the next proof get redone for that one horrible mistake or shall we let it pass? I leave the decision to Douglas Foote.
A friend in New York, Lionel Wilson, was mad for Cockney rhyming slang. ‘Come on Glynnie, tell me more, tell me more!’ He would have picked up on that one straight away.

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